Added switch to network and lost connection...

[kayf]

Hey everyone.
I have a bit of an interesting problem. I have a small network with only 2 computers: the despised WinXP box and my beloved Linux box running Mandriva 2006 Free. I recently installed Oracle on my window box and got just a little annoyed that I was being assigned a 192.168.2.* address by my router, so I decided to pick up a cheap switch. I bought an "Airnet 8 port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet Switch" (AEG108 ) and installed it today. My window box took it into stride, but my linux box doesn't seem to want to work with it no matter what I try. I went into the configuration center and fooled around with reconfiguring, deleting, and re-adding connections, etc.

I've spent the last 4 hours looking everywhere I could to try to find a solution/workaround for this, but to no avail. I even tried re-installing Mandriva, but still no result. Has anyone else run into something like this? Or does anyone have any idea as to what might be causing this? Thanks in advance!
~Kayf

[AlexK]

for the linux box, try giving it a static ip and tell it that the gateway to the internet is the router.

[kayf]

Okay, I think I figured it out - I'm limited to a single IP address with my ISP, and the window box yoinked it. I guess my choices include either paying for another IP or returning the switch and dealing with what I had (which honestly wasn't all that terrible). Thanks for the reply anyways!

[drl]

Hi, kayf.

Yes, I think you have the answer; but that is not necessarily the end.

Thousands of people are in your situation, but they are able to use multiple computers. I cannot give you the details, but basically a box (like your router) that has a protocol feature called NAT enabled will be able to deal with multiple computers.

If you are interested in a solution like that, I suggest you post in the Linux Networking forum, and the experts there can give you some guidance.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl